British Historian On Porn And Internet Censorship: North Korea Is Right -- The Internet Is Our Enemy

from the nobody-does-liberty-better-than-totalitarians dept

Timothy Stanley, University of Oxford historian and occasional blogger for The Daily Mail The Daily Telegraph, peers out at the internet (from within the internet) and decides he doesn't like what he sees. The problem? That old moral panicist's standby: pornography.

Over in the UK, British Prime Minister David Cameron has just introduced a rather overextensive anti-porn "crackdown" which forces Britain's four largest ISPs to filter pornographic material unless the user specifically opts in. Acting pretty much at the behest of something called the Mothers' Union, Cameron is also taking on billboards, aggressive advertising, sexualized tween clothing articles and, well, just about anything any concerned parent can dream up, thanks to the brand new Parentport website, where parents can go to file complaints about "any TV programme, advertisement, product or service they feel is inappropriate for children."

Stanley seems to be ok with all of this (as well as its obvious potential for abuse), referring to it as a "modest" proposal. He expresses dismay that so-called "conservative" commentators find this to be "injurious to liberty," while dropping what may very well be the quote of the day:

I am confused as to why such people use the label conservative to describe themselves. The single purpose of conservatism is to protect what is good about the traditional order. The internet is a threat to the traditional order and so it is not our friend. The North Koreans understand that, even if we do not.

At this point, many of us are getting up to open windows and doors and turn on the fans in an effort to diffuse a bit of the irony hanging in the air. Stanley has just used the internet to badmouth the internet. Fair enough. People do this all the time. But to drag North Korea in as some sort of example of The Way Things Should Be Done? It's too much. For a British citizen who writes about politics (often in a dissenting manner) and who travels freely between "London, Oxford and Los Angeles" to refer to a country where dissent and attempting to leave the country are frowned upon (and by "frowned upon," I mean "punished with lengthy imprisonment, torture and death") as being somehow "smarter" is downright incomprehensible. (And deplorable.)

But he's not done yet. Stanley pursues the familiar "gateway" theory. Much like our beloved drug warriors constantly remind us that marijuana is the "gateway drug" through which all drug users pass en route to wasting their lives away in badly lit PSAs, Stanley is here to tell us that pornography is the "gateway," um, "thing" that leads to pedophilia and serial killing.

Internet pornography is an obvious example of how permitting one variety of perversion invariably leads to greater and more terrible crimes. The internet turned pedophilia from a private sin into an organized crime. It put people in touch with each other who would never have otherwise met, allowing them to pool resources and share victims. It gave predators access to kids through forums. It also used mainstream porn as a gateway drug. By introducing younger and younger models into erotica, it blurred the lines between childhood and adulthood. People who previously would never have had access to material by which to test their inclinations were now goaded into more and more depravity ("If you enjoyed that, you'll love this..."). Its the expansiveness of the internet that makes it so ripe for regulating.

If you can fight your way through that paragraph without having your eyes roll out of your head, re-read that last sentence. "Because the internet is big, something should be done." It's nice to know that someone is out there encouraging politicians to grab ahold of something they can't possibly control and make a lot of "thinking about the children" noises until their approval ratings go up.

Porn is definitely evil, though. That much Stanley is sure of:

Nowadays, all a child has to do to access some muck is to log on to the family computer. Within seconds they can see videos of whips, goats, origami and tantric projection - the whole T&A.

In Stanley's mind, Cameron's proposal doesn't go far enough:

I would go one step further and suggest that it's time to give back to local authorities the power to outlaw the sale of pornography altogether.

Why?

Like heroin, porn has been proven to be addictive.

Now porn is no longer marijuana (a.k.a. "the gateway drug"), but rather the destination itself. And that destination is? You guessed it: Murdertown!

On an existential level, pornography objectifies human beings, reducing them to the status of commodities. There is no need to engage with them as real people because the sexual stimulus is entirely one sided. This encourages the viewer to regard the subject as less than human.

That objectification has lethal consequences. Porn addiction is a common trait among serial killers. The murderer Ted Bundy detailed his experiences thus: "I would keep looking for more explicit, more graphic kinds of materials ... until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far. You reach that jumping-off point where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it."

Troubling. Could porn actually lead to pedophilia and serial killing? Given porn's ubiquity on the "under-regulated" internet, you'd think the world would be filled with nothing but murderous pedophiles. Of course, there's no reason to refer to correlation and causation as identical (they're actually fraternal twins), no matter which side of this argument you're on. (That means you too, Stanley.)

So, without a doubt (in Stanley's mind), porn is bad and something draconian needs to be done about it. Unless, of course, you're talking about the good old days of porn when it came (sorry) in magazine form and needed to be smuggled about in paper bags and trenchcoats. Those were the good old innocent days, eh Stanley?

When I was a child, getting access to filth was bloody hard work. The best source was The Daily Sport, a silly old rag that featured saucy stories... All of this contact with nudity was fleeting and furtive. The joy was less in the seeing than the getting.

Oh. I see. When you're nostalgically viewing your mental Kinetoscope (in Rose-Tinted Nostalgia-Vision™), porn was just "dirty magazines" and free of the serial killer training material that is so prevalent today. Boys will be boys, I guess. Except not anymore, apparently, because according to Stanley's back-of-an-envelope calculations (Porn + Internet = Bad) they'll just grow up to torture household pets when not idly sexting naked shots of themselves to their Facebook friends.

Well, Mr. Stanley, no wonder you're behind the Prime Minister's proposal. Anyone who's cool with the ISPs collecting a list of opt-in perverts at the behest of the government and who supports the implementation of a nationwide snitch line to keep people from being offended can most likely read your post with a straight face, somehow missing the irony, hypocrisy and unintentional hilarity its steeped in. I, as a fan of free speech and someone who "frowns upon" [see definition above] handing over control of the internet to various governments entities, cannot.

Yes let us censor the internet to protect people.
Let us start with University of Oxford historians who have obviously failed to study history.
Kim Jong-Il as a role model for a free society shows a complete failing of understanding a dictatorship and a democracy. History should have given him a much better understanding of these types of moral panics and how often they are overblown by so-called experts who it turns out have no qualification for the job and often have a hidden agenda.

How long has the University of Oxford been blocking your access to goatse Mr. Stanely? Are you cranky that others can see that which you no longer can? What is the creepy "historical" explanation for your fascination with 2 girls 1 cup? Or are you hoping to land a spot on the commission in charge of the list of porn so you can avoid having to learn how to use Google like everyone else?

Erm, what? Is there a new paper-based fetish of which I'm previously unaware, or is this guy merely an idiot?

Oh, Daily Fail. Carry on then...

"The murderer Ted Bundy detailed his experiences thus:"

John Wayne Gacy was known to be a pretty big Disney fan, while Jeffrey Dahmer has a number of anecdotes associated with him and his apparent obsession the character of Emperor Palpatine from Return Of The Jedi. Should we ban those as well?

"When I was a child, getting access to filth was bloody hard work. The best source was The Daily Sport, a silly old rag that featured saucy stories..."

What I was a child, I remember every single page of the Sport being covered with tits, and half the back of the paper being ads for sex chatlines, sex toys and videos where nobody asked your age before sending them off. I also remember having access to whatever my mates happened to get off their older brothers, which included hardcore and (uuurgh) scat porn back when both were only available on VHS and totally illegal in the UK.

This all just furthers my assumption that a lobotomy is a prerequisite for writing for that particular rag.

Re: Re:

I can see your feeling but my feeling when I read that was rather disturbing. Could they have taken BSDM up a notch and added paper sheets under the nails to the repertoire of painful and disturbing practices?

Disclaimer: I have nothing against BSDM lovers but my freedom of speech allows me to voice my opinion that you are all freaks. But then again I must be a freak too depending on the point of view so we are even ;)

Re: Hmmm...

Nope

It's a commonly-reported fallacy that the filters are opt-out only.

In fact, the proposals merely mandate the ISPs to ask the user at the point of subscription whether they want the filters enabled on their account or not. You have to make a choice, but it's not decided for you.

Is no one else going to bring up the fact that Ted Bundy killed all those people in the seventies? I highly doubt any of his porn was obtained via internet; oh well, Ted must have had to make do with The Daily Sport as well.

These people really piss me off, if you don't like what you see on the internet don't friggin' go looking for it. Stop being offended on behalf of others who, probably, would rather wank themselves to death than spend 5 minutes listening to the drivel spouted by these "Christians".

Re:

These supposed Christians don't read their bible
Here is Mark Ch 7 v15
"There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man."

How about a law that requires parents to do some actual parenting? Perhaps parents should talk to their kids and prepare them for the day they encounter pornography whether on the Internet or elsewhere.

Re:

Oxford man?

This is the kind of thinking Oxford can produce these days?

So the past, in which there was no internet, was simply fabulous? Did this moron forget Hitler? or two incredibly murderous world wars, the Cold War, the killing fields in South East Asia, several centuries of almost non-stop war all over Europe...what's not to like?

Yes, let's go back to that great era in which there was no internet and people didn't watch porn - instead they lived in misery and abject poverty, and raped and murdered their fellow man at every opportunity, at the behest of their religious and political leaders, who had a complete monopoly on information.

Yes, let's turn the clock back - why stop with the internet? What about the printing press - books filled with filth, that's what Gutenberg really meant!

Let's go back to the really harmonious days, when all the people believed in one God and his Son and a ghost, and all was peace and bliss in the world, except in the dungeons of the church's inquisitors where the screams of the heretics bothered no one, least of all self-righteous cowards like Timothy Stanley, University of Oxford historian, who knows shit about history and couldn't care less about his fellow man.

This a great example why to tenure should be abolished in academia. Man, Britain has seriously regressed if this is the quality of thinking at Oxford. What an utter a--hole.

In that case why stop at outlawing porn? We must also outlaw sex, and sexual relationships, any kind, it doesn't matter if it's two individuals or a different gender or the same, it also doesn't matter if it's consensual sex!

After all, sex is what porn is all about. If porn can be addictive then obviously sex can be addictive as well, so we must do something about it!

Just like drug dealers exploit their customers who are addicted to the drugs, and just like people who look at porn are exploiting the people in the photographs, people having sex are exploiting each other for their own sick addiction to sex!

Reporting Parentport?

the brand new Parentport website, where parents can go to file complaints about "any TV programme, advertisement, product or service they feel is inappropriate for children."

Don't worry - I'm just off to the parentport website to register a complaint that the parentport website and state censorship are inappropriate for children (and everyone else). I expect to see the news it's all been shut down in the next few days.

In the meantime how about a Kickstarter project to fund a one way ticket for Stanley to North Korea, since it's evidently a halcyon ideal state with no porn and thus no crime.

A modest satire?

Actually propaganda to /promote/ pornography.

Polarizing drivel. With just one or two wacky statements, suddenly everyone jumps to the opposite of the apparent proposition, and begins vehemently defending a vice as an actual positive good. The reasonable middle ground is lost.

Don't believe everything you read is as on the surface. At least comments above think it may be satire...

Disclaimer: I'm not against vice in /moderation/. Moderation in all things, ancient Greek advice.

Civilization dies again.

Everything new leads to the end of civilization. Just in my own lifetime it has been repeatedly destroyed by the following perils.

1) Comic books in the 1950's
2) Rock and Roll in the 1960's
3) Disco in the 1970's (they may have been correct about that one)
4) Video games in the 1980's
5) Rap in the 1990's
6) and 2000's to present the internet!!!

Re: Civilization dies again.

The image of comic books leading to the end of civilization caused me to choke in laughter. But in a sense you are right. Anything that doesn't fit the conservative way of life (at the time) is seen as something satanic, evil and depraving. I wonder what will be the next demonized movement...

Re: Civilization dies again.

As this an article from the Fail, you have to slot "video nasties" in the for the 1980s. This ridiculous moral crusade achieved nothing except and extremely short-lived "victory" for the right-wing censors led largely by... the Daily Mail. A pattern here, I think.

On bluring adulthood and childhood?

I find it ironic that this fellow should discuss the blurring of childhood and adulthood in the same article as his reference to preserving good stuff from the past. Like Ronald Reagen and his "traditional family values", Stanley, an historian, ignores the real past. Victorian England was not all Sherlock Holmes and Pomp and Circumstance marches. Little kids, some in their single digit years worked alongside adults in mills and mines. They logged double digit hours with maybe some time off on Sunday to pray. If that isn't blurring childhood and adulthood, what, pray tell, is?

he is a historian does he not know that porn has been around for at least 100 years from Victorian saucy postcards to today. all of which have been illegal in the UK at some point.or moaned about by prudes they still about and so will porn be regardless of this ruling. check out http://www2.arnes.si/~dlimon/Saucy%20Postcards.htm

Re:

Porn has been around a lot longer than that. There are plenty of examples of prehistoric porn, not to mention sex toys.

By the way, did you know that the man who was hired by Edison to develop the motion picture (William Dickson) also developed the first porn movies around the same time? Just an interesting bit of trivia.

"When I was a child, getting access to filth was bloody hard work. The best source was The Daily Sport, a silly old rag that featured saucy stories..."
he obviously must have succeeded in getting access, mustn't he.
as a historian, he must be well aware of the kind of decadent society existed in ancient Rome. bet he still teaches about the 'Roman Empire' tho'.

He's a troll.

Ted Bundy was apprehended February 15, 1978. What does internet porn have to do with him? Is the author really claiming a causal link? Porn made him do it?

He claims "The internet turned pedophilia from a private sin into an organized crime". Got any evidence of this? Organized crime organizations were not involved in child porn or the kidnapping and exploitation of children before the internet?

"The single purpose of conservatism is to protect what is good about the traditional order." Maybe that is what you want to define conservatism as, but I doubt you'd find a majority to agree with you. Then he goes on to state that the North Koreans get it.

Of course, "The constitution of North Korea declares that "the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall, by carrying out a thorough cultural revolution, train all the people to be builders of socialism and communism." So a country whose constitution dictates that the entire populace shall be brainwashed to build communism and socialism is the one we should be looking to for advice on, well, anything?

Pornotopia

Hi,

I enjoyed this debunking of my article enormously. One small correction: I write for the Daily Telegraph. Although, in this instance, my thesis would probably suit the Daily Mail better.

On the North Korea and origami thing, it's germane to my style (and this was on my personal site) to use non sequiturs and outrageous statements to satirical effect: "Brave New World!" and "Think of the children!" are comparative examples. This is a very English quirk and shouldn't be read too much in to. I shall close with another:

Re: Pornotopia

Re: Pornotopia

Hi, Tim.

Thanks for enjoying this debunking. I'd argue I enjoyed writing it more, but I don't want to threadjack the comments simply to expound on the joy of writing/debunking.

First of all, let me apologize on linking you with the Daily Mail. I was cross-referencing your post with your provided link to the details of Cameron's proposal, which happened to be at the Daily Mail. I started with the word "Daily" and followed through with what I happened to be reading at the time.

While I can see that the North Korea/origami (esp. the second one) are elements of your style, the first one (North Korea) bears a little too much resemblance to Bono's suggestion that the US could use a little China-style internet tracking to cut down on infringement. The suggestion was made in faux-passing, as in "I don't think that we should necessarily emulate on of the worst countries in the world in terms of civil rights, but the technology is available." The mention of North Korea seems (to me) to be in that same spirit.

Now, I have to admit that after reading that particular paragraph, I was under the impression that your post might be some ultra-low-key, triple-black satire. So, I did a bit of browsing around, both on your site and your writing for the Daily Telegraph. Considering the slant of some of your pieces (and your upcoming biography of Pat Buchanan), I have no reason to believe that this post is anything but what it appears to be: a supporting voice in favor of censoring the internet.

Thanks for reading (and for writing, because without your piece, I wouldn't have mine),

"On an existential level, retail employment objectifies human beings, reducing them to the status of robots. There is no need to engage with them as real people because the customer service experience is entirely one sided. This encourages the customer to regard the employee as less than human."

FTFY

If we're going to have a moral panic about every element of society that objectifies human beings, let's talk about credit scores, fashion, customer service, corporations, meat market bars and clubs, social security and drivers license numbers, and automobiles.

The only problem with free speech...

Educate don't legislate

The problem with most control freaks who want to ban, fine or penalise others activities is that they miss the main point. If people didn't want to view or use porn then there would be no problem. The problems are all of our own making, the solutions are not to be found in penalties, or fines or bans, they can only be found through consensus and education, free thinking and freedom of thought are in the end, the ONLY way change occurs in a community. Educate, don't legislate. Legislation is nothing more than an admission of failure to communicate, a failure of consensus.

Looks like some commenters (puts on sunglasses)

Aren't so Swift.

YEEEAAAAH!!

The ready availability of Irish child pornography is especially troubling, as it serves to objectify what could otherwise be pristine source of food for the millions of starving. English children have to be told often enough not to play with their food, now we run the risk of having to constantly remind them not to fantasize about their food as well.

Re: Shades of Reefer Madness...

First, I think we should acknowledge the possibility that getting used to transgressing a traditional social boundary can indeed lead one to believe that such traditional social boundaries are often arbitrary and need not be respected. That being said, the vast majority of people have no interest in murder, child molestation and other distasteful activities. Just because there is no balustrade and people can get close to the edge does not mean they are going to jump.

In there are many benefits to be gained from people not feeling as constrained by social pressures. "Out-of-the-box" thinking is by its very nature transgressive and has given us some of the most amazing innovations in existence. In the sexual realm, being exposed to many ideas may allow some people to realize that there are safe and consensual ways to explore fantasies that they may otherwise have expressed in truly harmful ways.

But that's all intellectual masturbation. The cold hard facts tell the story. And the story is that countries with tighter controls on access to pornography tend to have a higher incidence of rape. In other words, the quoted historian should look long and hard at considering a different career.

History?

Going back, Volstead Act: We all know it as prohibition, and when distilled spirits and its brethren were declared illegal in the United States. It was intended to protect us from ourselves, but out of it grew an underground culture that did not care, and organizations which were made wealthy by even today's standards by its illicit trade.

Columbia and Pablo Escobar. The shear fact that coke is illegal and so furiously hunted made it as expensive as it is. We have waged war on this drug for decades, and somehow it is still all over the United States in very large amounts. Those cartels now have cash in the billions of dollars.

The Zeta cartel in Mexico: We have all heard of the news where groups of people and journalists are being beheaded by the cartels members over the drug trade in Northern Mexico. They are so brazen the even target police chiefs in broad daylight.

Banning porn. Won't work, not ever. Even if we threw money at it, and created a porn police people would still find a way to get what they are looking for. It would take what people now do in the private of their homes (or not). And push it down even farther.

The problem is that government thinks that they are doing this for the good of the people overall. They should not be the ones who get to make that decision, I should. If I want to watch porn in my house at night then that is what I am going to do. My neighbor never needs to know, nor should he be interested, but that is a different story. Society judges people for their actions. Mostly we all agree that murder is a bad thing so don't do it. Cocaine is a bad things so be prepared to be judged if you get caught. Porn is generally something that is not shared openly, though society seems to be making a slow turn on this one as a more main stream thing. The only people I tend to hear complaining about it are my wife, and old people.

Re: History?

What is most impressive is that things that really need some kind of barrier governments get rid off, like assassinating others when done by the government has no legal repercussions, but it should as to act as a deterrent to abuse of that power, but somehow porn is a bigger problem.

They need to protect business, but they don't protect little business or people, like copyrights that are used to get musicians that actually work for a living fired or without venues to work, because someone once wrote some music and they claim ownership and want absurd amounts of money for nothing, those artists they claim to represent won't go down to a bar and play, they won't entertain nobody on the clubs but even without working they still want the money and claim it is their right, I can't see nobody else that gets money without having to work for it, I don't even see other companies that can go after their customers and claim they are owned money for things they didn't do, I couldn't see a taxi driver having to pay Ford for using Ford cars to make money.

The more I see what people do in power the more I think their compass is pointing in a direction opposite of what mine points.

Dire Straits was right "Money for nothing".

Still, this government nonsense is not really about porn, is about control of the population, the guy pulled a U2Bono here because the government actually is scared now after the London riots.

Re: Re: History?

Isn't protesting generally about speaking out against an abuse of power? If the UK would just look at its own history. Clamping down on a population usually has the opposite affect that they are hoping for.

Re: Re:

We have met the enemy,

and he is ...us! (It's all God's fault, though... coming up with this thing "sex". I mean, really... what was God thinking? Well, it's just nice to have all these "experts" who know better how the world should be. [Of course, the next thing you know, they'll all be calling for clothing the animals... wild ones, too.])

Timothy Stanley - Luddite

Timothy Stanley mirrors the thought process of persons disrupting technological advances in the weaving of yard goods during the early 1800s. He is a perfect example of a Luddite. As a historian he should recognize that he is behaving like a Luddite. See this description of Luddites here:

Re: Pron

"Leftists" are the ones into porn? Funny, everything I read about a porn scandal it's because some repressed religious nut or "conservative" politician's been caught consuming/making it (usually gay porn, if they're vehemently anti-gay)...

The conservatives are the ones who would wish to kill my freedom to repress their own deviant urges. Sorry dude, you can't enforce celibacy onto me just because you can't take your own humanity.